Analysis of Current v3.1.3 Professions in WoW's Economy

In the previous post I cited how using professions correctly on the auction house can seriously bring in some big gold if you spend the time to invest and grind. I will be reviewing every profession to show the possible ways to get gold from the auction house using them and what your gold per hour would be if you use them. Keep in mind the gold per hour I post is a dependable figure, and doesn’t figure in if Joe Shmo buys your copper bar’s for a million gold every blue moon. I will tell you the gph (gold per hour) for each profession first:

Remember these are dependable figures that relate to the current patch and the current expansion. V3.1.3

Alchemy - ~50gph
Blacksmithing - ~150gph
Enchanting - ~100gph
Engineering - ~0gph
Herb Gathering - ~200-250gph
Mining - ~250-300gph
Inscription - ~20-40gph
Tailoring - ~200gph
Skinning- ~150-200gph
Leatherworking - ~150gph
Jewelcrafting - ~100gph

Alchemy – ~50g per hour - During BC everybody was making money through transmutes because you could proc a butt load of Primal Might’s if you was specced into it. That definitely isn’t the case here. I would say if you DON’T have Herb Gathering you will not have much any income at all, if you do then it will be roughly 50 gold every hour. To tell you the truth this profession only serves as a vending machine during raid’s that you attend. You can make way more money selling the herbs to other alchemists and millers on the auction house.

Blacksmithing – ~150g per hour – Most people that try and make money through blacksmithing sell set’s of gear through the trade channel and try to make it out that the person buying it is getting a good deal and make off with the extra income. This isn’t dependable because not many people go out looking for a full complete set of gear. This profession is mostly just used to twink out your alternate melee characters. Quite possibly it has the potential to give you a burst of income if you have mining as well. Because you eventually get enough resources to make titan steel weapons you will be rolling in the gold. But to tell you the truth in the end you could have made a more steady cash flow mining instead of blacksmithing. This is a utility profession not a money making one.

Enchanting - ~100g per hour – Depending how much you keep up with your banking with mats this has the potential to give some good income. But it is way too dependent on if the prices of the mats on the auction house are low. This would be a good lazy man’s profession to make money on because you can just every now and then hop on and scan the auction house to buy mats that are 10-40% of the average market price. Yet again you might as well make more money with the disenchanting skill that this profession comes with. A profession that is used for twinking alts and that random request from guildies to get a free enchantment. Don’t get this profession if you want to make serious gold.

Engineering - ~0 per hour – Self explanatory. Engineering is strictly used as a form of entertainment for the person that has this. You will be spending all of your days trying to get enough money for that god forsaken motorcycle. Not to mention this is an EXTREMELY expensive profession to skill up.

Herb Gathering - ~200-250g per hour – This is a very good profession to make money but ONLY if you are extremely lucky. The prices for herbs fluctuate on nearly every server depending on the demand. But the good thing about this profession is that herbs sell like hotcakes, sometimes almost instantly. There are two other professions that use herbs to skill up and this is an excellent way to get money quickly.

Mining – ~250-300g per hour – If you follow the previous guide that I posted before you will be making this amount of gold dependably. The prices for ore don’t really fluctuate at all on most servers and the ore is bought relatively quickly. If you want to get a huge burst of income weekly then save your ore till Monday night and put everything on the auction house. The same goes for Friday night. This profession is excellent because it is used in three other different professions (Prospecting & Blacksmithing & Engineering) giving it the maximum amount of demand possible. Although for some reason herbs still sell faster, maybe they are just used in higher quantities.

Inscription - ~20-40g per hour – This is a terrible profession to learn if you want to make gold. Some of the glyphs are somewhat moderate to put on the auction house because you find some people re-speccing quite often. But the problem is ever sense the secondary spec was implemented into the game people don’t use glyphs barely at all. I would say get this profession so that you can save some money on your alternate characters.

Tailoring - ~200g per hour – If you are exalted with the Kirin Tor and the Son’s of Hodir then this profession will give you what I like to call Niche Cash. What you will be selling is Glacial Bag’s and Sapphire Spellthread. Most people that put these on the auction house put them at a pretty crazy price. But you can chop off nearly 25g and make atleast a 50g profit from just buying mats off the auction house. If you need frostweave then go to icecrown and the wall in the middle of the map (above the mountain that the glacier goes around) to the north there are some alchemist cloth wearing mobs that spawn like crazy and drop frostweave like nuts. This is pretty dependable as a profession but it costs a TON to skill up and is dependent on the prices of mats in the auction house.

Skinning - ~150-200g per hour – Depending on how fast you can kill and how responsive you are to skinning dead skinnable monsters this is an okay way to get gold. Every once and a while you will get the rare leathers that will sell for a buttload but I would say this is completely dependent on your gear and class.

Leatherworking - ~150g per hour – This is almost the same strategy as Tailoring with the item enchants for melee classes but you can’t really make any glacial bags so it cripples the strategy a bit. The melee item enchants on the auction house are usually fluctuating in price and a low demand makes for a high abundance. But if you watch the auction house and notice a armor enchant that doesn’t populate the auction house that much then monopolize it for maximum income.

Jewel crafting- ~100g per hour – I would say definitely that Prospecting will get you more gold than actually jewel crafting. The amount of gold spent for ore (or even free if you have mining) is only one third of the amount of gold you will get out of the prospecting if you are moderately lucky enough to get some Ruby’s. The problem with this profession is that it is mostly about luck. The market is flooded with gem’s so you wont really make much income that way.